In cinematic history, few films have managed to capture the hearts of audiences quite like Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s Back to the Future. The film is the perfect comedy of science-fiction, comedy, and drama and it is impossible for movie lovers to think of a world without Back to the Future. However, there was a time when no one wanted to bet on the film.
That’s right. While Back to the Future is as iconic as iconic gets, many studios turned a blind eye to the script for one reason or the other. But then there was Steven Spielberg who always saw the potential in the film and eventually was able to get himself the last laugh.
How Steven Spielberg Got Attached to Back to the Future
Bob Gale first had the idea for Back to the Future when he was looking around in his parents’ basement and came across his father’s high school yearbook (via All The Right Movies). Looking at his father’s younger self, Gale was struck by a thought and asked himself if he, as a seventeen-year-old, would have been friends with his dad or not.
Almost as if it was a ‘Eureka’ moment, Gale retold this incident to Robert Zemeckis and they decided to turn it into a full-fledged movie. The basic idea was – a high school student travels back in time, meets his parents, and his future mother-to-be falls in love with him.
Afterward, they pitched the idea to Columbia Pictures’ then-president Frank Price who then commissioned a screenplay. After spending days working on the script, they presented it to the studio but came face to face with rejection.
They then showed it to Steven Spielberg, with whom they had worked earlier on Used Cars (1980). As per Spielberg’s words,
It was a very unusual story but based on old-fashioned principles like family and coming of age and dreams and desires and the generation gap. It was really terrific.
Clearly, Spielberg was in and wanted his production company, Amblin Entertainment, to make the film. However, since their collaborations were relatively considered to be failures, Gale and Zemeckis did not want to gain a reputation of only getting work because of their friendship with Spielberg. Thus, they set out on a mission to pitch their story to other studios. Unfortunately, it was a ‘No’ each time.
According to Columbia, the film was“too sweet” and in Universal’s opinion, “time travel movies don’t make any money.” The duo also took their film to Disney who stated that it was “too incestuous.” Dejected, the idea was put on the back burner and Zemeckis moved on to direct Romancing the Stone (1984).
To everyone’s surprise, the film was a huge hit and people started queueing up to bid for Back to the Future. However, Zemeckis and Gale decided that they would rather work with Spielberg who believed in them all along rather than studios who doubted them. And that’s how Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment became linked to possibly the greatest sci-fi, time travel film of all time, starring Michael J. Fox.
Steven Spielberg Was Always There for the Film
Spielberg’s vision as a filmmaker allows him to see what others cannot which is probably why he was the first one to see potential in the film. He helped Back to the Future get on its feet but this wasn’t the only time Spielberg had the film’s back.
In an interview with ShortList.com, Gale recalled how an executive wanted them to change the film’s title to Spaceman From Pluto. While they first ignored his demand, he eventually became more and more stubborn on the idea and that’s when Spielberg stepped in.
Using humor as a weapon, Spielberg was able to solve the problem in no time. Gale stated,
It helped that Steven was behind us because he protected us against the studio, Universal. During filming we had one executive keep asking us to change the title to Spaceman From Pluto, a reference to the comic seen in the barn, which we ignored. Eventually he became to adamant of changing the movie title he sent us a memo about it.
Unsure how to handle it, we took the memo to Steven, who told us ‘Don’t worry, I know how to handle him,’ before writing a letter back which said, ‘Hi Sid, thanks for your most humorous memo, we all got a big laugh out of it, keep ‘em coming.’ Steven knew he would too embarrassed to say that he wanted us to take the letter seriously. Luckily nobody questioned the title after that.
And that’s how Spielberg’s quick thinking stopped Universal from committing such an atrocity. Can you imagine the film not having the iconic title that it does? Even Gale agreed that things would have been “very different” without Spielberg.
Stream Back to the Future on Netflix.
